Classroom of the Elite : New game

Total Cards (Part One)

"The game is simple, I like it, we agree. Simply, I have a requirement in terms of card shuffling, I want to see you do known techniques, not weird ones."

"I'll do an American shuffle and an Indian shuffle, is that okay?

"That's fine."

"Is everyone ready then?"

"Yes!"

The two young gamers shouted in unison.

"I'll say it again, but you're allowed to whisper to each other to communicate, simply you're not allowed to talk to Kushida-chan for obvious reasons."

"No worries, how about we start the first round?"

Said Sora with the same smile on his face. Yoshino looked at Maeda and Chikako who sat down opposite each other, Maeda was opposite to Shiro and Chikako opposite to Sora. Yoshino began his shuffle and dealt 27 cards to each team, with the cards turned over. He took each pile and shuffled them again, making a new distribution of 5 cards to each player. When all the deals were done, he gathered the remaining cards and without shuffling them, placed them in the middle of the table.

"Kushida-chan?"

"Uh... yes?"

"To find out which team starts drawing their opponent's card first, we'll flip a coin, can you do it? I'll give you the coin."

"Uh... okay."

"It'll be heads for your team and tails for mine."

Kushida stepped forward, picked up the coin and tossed it into the air.

"Tails! Luck is on your side, Sora and Shiro you may begin, remember you are obliged to draw a card from your opponent's hand but not obliged to draw one from the pile on the table."

"Very well."

Sora and Shiro began the game. Shiro had the following cards: 5, 8, 4, 10, J, which gave her a total of 38 points. Sora had the following cards: 3,7,7,10,D which gave him a total of 39 points. Their team had a total of 77 points, and Yoshino's team had a total of 80 points.

The rounds went by rather quickly, Sora was in deep thought. He was sure of one thing: this game was not a simple game of chance, there was a certain cheating technique that was used for sure. If it was only a game of chance then Yoshino didn't need to call two of his friends to play with him, after all if he wins the 100 000 points, he will have to share it with them which is not to his advantage.

Sora was then convinced that Yoshino had rigged the game in order to ensure his victory and for that he needed his two friends. If he could win, then he was sure to get a certain amount of points, which was much better than relying on luck to get 100,000 points.

Sora was sure that he would lose the first round, so he had to use this round to identify the cheating in order to avoid losing the other two.

He observed everything, the cards, the players, he noticed that the two players in front of him were whispering at each turn, which was not normal considering the chance factor of the game, they should not have so many things to communicate about if it was the case.

He then noticed that after each whisper Maeda would immediately pick up a card from Shiro but the reverse was never true, Maeda rarely said anything to Chikako it was rather she who passed on the information.

He remembered the fact that there were three packs of laminated cards. He didn't think it was strange at first because it was considered an anti-cheating measure, but if it turned out that the game was rigged, then those packs might have had some other significance as well.